Whee! Prototype For Summer ’09

Share this:

Hulk-meets-GTA open-world absorb ’em up Prototype has been heavily delayed, with the game now due for release in the summer of 2009. (Assuming we have a summer this year, and that hasn’t been cancelled due to budgetary constraints). The free-running organ-burster remains a contender for high accolades of action-game excellence, especially when contrasted with the other lacklustre run-and-jump games from the past 18 months. The pedigree of developers Radical Entertainment is pretty good, having impressed us with Hulk: Ultimate Destruction back in the previous console generation. All this means, of course, that the hype machine has been set spinning again with a superb action-splatter trailer to kick off the year, which is posted after the jump. The staged demo of this game at GDC 2008 was one of the highlights of the conference for me, and I still have high hopes for the finished game.

The trailer contains most of the stuff we’ve seen before, with perhaps a little more emphasis on the “become anyone” side of things. I’m hoping that the stealth option is going to be real and necessary for at least the first part of the game. I’m still a bit sceptical about the protagonist appearing to be the same guy who hangs around in the bus shelter down my road, but I’m fairly sure that guy can’t run along the side of skyscrapers.

There’s also a new website opened for the game, with more info, movies, and so on.

Just because you’ve never seen him run on a sky scraper you assume he can’t. Bigots like you are ruining this country. Less importantly, is this delay “we want a masterwork” or “good god this is a mess”.

While I was looking forward to Prototype a lot (it’s basically a sequel to Hulk: Ultimate Destruction, which was the best superhero game EVER). However, my interest has waned.

Not 100% on this (heard from a yet-unverified second-hand source), but I’ve heard that during the BlizzActivision merger clusterfuck, Radical Entertainment almost got the axe. They lost a *lot* of their original talent, and are genereally not nearly the studio they used to be.

On top of that, apparently they’re editing/censoring the game down a lot from its original concept. Much less (possibly none) gore, less random cruelty to passersby, less opportunity to be a dick.

Looks better than the last time I saw it. It suffers a bit from over-Bayification and the transform animation appears to be largely made up of squiggle sprites in a Saturday morning cartoon kind of way, but I remain cautiously optimistic.

Trailer reminds me of the movie “Hancock”. It didn’t have transforming ‘n’ stuff, but the main character didn’t remember who he is and the flying looks quite similar. The trailer looked pretty impressive, but I have a feeling the game is going to be bad (as was Hancock BTW).

I just realized that this game is basically a more violent version of Infamous for the PS3, which makes me sad cause Infamous is by Sucker Punch and it sucks that this game is going to totally overshadow their first big non-kids game.

I’ll get it for me 360 if the consensus is that its not rubbish, woyu’dn’t play it on a PC though, it’s not clever enough and if previous ports of heavily action oriented games from the consoles are anything to go by it just won’t work the same way on the PC (ie the way the devs intend it to)

@ Dominic White: Ultimate Destruction was great fun but the combat was less fun later in the game I found. Whereas in Spider-Man 2 the web-swinging was always fun. Prototype looks like it might have the going-places-can-be-fun thing down too.

Looked great apart from the controllable vehicles. It’s just become so common that it’s almost expected and in my experience just watering down the whole game. I want the team to focus on the absurd melee and acrobatics that made HULK:UD one of the best games on the X-Box and not on QTE jacking sequences.

Reply to Dominic White

That’s a lot of maybes, ifs and uncredited sources you got going there. I don’t not believe you but this is how Internet rumours start.

Oh also, for the record I am absolutely certain this game will be dreadful. I think it will be crippled by a too rabid attempt to create cool attacks, and by open world design which will leave the game feeling empty and repetitive. Feel free to quote me if/when I turn out to be wrong, but this will definitely not be one among my ’09 purchases

Gaming really needs a good super hero game (particularly pc gaming – why, oh why did they shit on us with Spiderman 2?), and maybe this could be it. Not heard much on it in a long time, but I remember it looking interesting before. Will hold out for some reviews/demo till I decide whether to give it a go.

If it turns out to be a dud, all our hopes are going to have to lie on the new Batman game, the films have pushed the bar high for super hero films so maybe the game could do the same.

Hopefully they’ll remember the fun contextual stuff from Hulk: UD – Nothing was quite so empowering as picking up people, holding them in the air, having a change of heart, then putting them gentley back down and patting them paternally on the head.

Looks like a lot of things are being pulled over from Hulk: UD. That game feels pretty underrated. The combat in Prototype looks like it’s very much a spiritual successor, improving in the right places.

The scene framing when you go toe to toe in the air is pretty excellent.

Re. Stealth. The one stealth bit in Ultimate Destruction was hilarious though.

Re. Infamous. Weird that it seems on the surface to be similar to Infamous, yet looking a bit more it’s pretty clear that It’s just Hulk: Ultimate Destruction and Sly Cooper 2/3 underneath each game respectivly, just with a too similar visual look on top.

Re. Violence. God, I hope there’s an option to tone down or switch off the blood in this game. Or replace all the civilians with zombies or something like that. And maybe a mod to replace the main character model with something a bit more fun. As is, it looks a bit too much like Millar’s Wanted. Not the film, but the comic. The one with the ‘this is my face’ page.